Some SEO strategists may ignore the use of broken links as a convenient tool for link building. Broken link building technique is a scalable SEO strategy that is reliable and is able to convert your business strategy into reality.
It is as simple as finding broken links on website pages and reaching out to the owners to offer a replacement service. The broken link building is useful because it enables site owners to replace broken links while providing content that is compelling for the target audience.
For a successful broken link building campaign to be executed, you must balance it with several content marketing strategy for optimum results. Although SEO broken link building is a fundamental part of search engine optimization, it doesn’t solely depend on it as it drives referral organic traffic and increases brand awareness.
Broken link building is the most effective in recent times, it can help you build high quality content and relevant backlinks that drive organic traffic to your website.
What are Broken links?
A link is broken on a website when it no longer leads to the exact content that it’s supposed to reference on search engines, resulting in an unpleasant 404 error. The cause of these broken links may be a result of a mistake when linking to external content web pages.
Broken link building is the mechanism that involves building backlinks by replacing dead links with actual working high quality backlinks to a target website’s page.
Broken link building offers users the opportunity to browse content on a website while taking advantage of broken pages on the website. This link building campaign involves searching for external links on other website pages in your industry and reaching out through email marketing to secure a replacement for the content created.
Why Do You Need To Use Broken Links For Link Building?
As it explained earlier, you don’t have to solely embark on broken link building tactics for your business. You have to carefully map out other link building strategies while you work on sourcing for broken external links.
Effective backlink management is crucial to ensure that all acquired links, including those from broken link building, contribute positively to your site’s SEO.
Broken link building opportunities help you rank on search engine results pages and also increase organic search traffic for conversion.
However, the reasons why you should embark on this link building tactics include:
- Supplementing other link building strategies
- You can build links over pages with inherited authority
- You can easily create relevant content for growth and web presence
- It leverages backlinks pointing to competitor
- It can build a long-lasting relationship with other websites by replacing dead links with internal links.
Replacing broken links is an effective SEO strategy that provides the utmost benefit to e-commerce businesses in the digital market. When you actively search broken pages through helpful resources on websites you can easily find pages and replace them with direct links.
How To Find Relevant Broken Links?
It isn’t difficult to find broken links on other websites, there are different ways to resource pages for link building. HubSpot is a popular website and a resourceful page for getting up-to-date information for finding dead pages.
Finding a broken link is an important part of a successful SEO strategy. Below are 5 basic SEO link building tools used to recover a broken link on a dead page.
Online Broken Link Checker
This is a free online tool checker for broken link, it lets you check pages of a website. An example is BrokenLinkCheck.com which checks about 3000 pages for free. The features of this broken link checker include:
- It validates both external and internal URL
- It is used to check website pages and blog post for dead link
- It scans an unlimited number of web pages
- It can report an error message code for a bad URL
Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugin
It can be complex using plugins, before using WordPress it is recommended to off-load duties while separating tools via any other method. If you must check using plugin don’t leave it active and running always. Run once instead and delete from the site after you fixed the broken links.
Desktop Software
There is some software that helps in finding broken links aside from the SEO audit tools. An example is the Screaming Frog which is free to use. After that, you use a response code option to filter pages and use “Inlinks” feature to find 404 pages. For Mac desktop users, it is recommended to use Integrity as a desktop SEO tool.
Google Search Console
This is a tool from Google that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website in Google search results. To begin the process you will have to verify through Google Search Console before exploring the features available. It also includes Crawl errors that report all the pages that returned a 404 error to Google.
Web-Based SEO Audit Tool
This is a web-based search engine tool, that automatically scans your website for errors and checks any form of dead pages. Websites like Ahrefs, and SEMrush are the most popular ones. These tools are also on page SEO strategies that help in keyword research for search volume and search engine rankings.
Key SEO Strategies For Converting Broken Links
There are so many SEO strategies to follow in other to rank on search engines. These SEO efforts require consistent application of target keywords in creating relevant content. It is easy to find these links nowadays using backlink tools.
Contact the Right Person
It is important to have a list of prospects to reach out to, and also have a list of links pointing to dead pages. As soon as you compiled your outreach list, then you need to send emails to prospects convincing them to replace their broken link with the ones to your site.
You don’t need to be pushy, gently nudge the person to see the reasons behind your intent. For this strategy to work you need to get to the right person otherwise your email will end up in spam.
Instead of using an old template design to craft content you can improvise simply by reaching out to the webmaster, and learning more about them so you can follow up according. Taking things to another level entails creating original content that replaces dead links.
Create Content That Is Linked
You need to understand what a dead page is before choosing to link to previous content. Simply find a page on your site that relates to the topic and can be an alternative or replacement link. Also, create content that adds value to your site in the same way as the dead link.
Vet the Link Prospects
You don’t need to jump into creating a related page after discovering a dead page with a backlink. If your broken page does not have good backlinks it will be a waste of time pushing to replace a page.
In order to keep your content in sync, you need to understand why people link to a dead page, this will make it easy for you to handle backlinks effectively.
Monitor the Site’s SEO Performance
Keeping track of external and internal links should be a necessity to ensure they all function well. It prevents the risk of incorrect URLs from showing up in the future while allowing visitors to stay engaged on your website to increase the website click-through rate from other domain authorities.
Analyze Your Competitors
Research your competitors to see what methods they use in building links. This can be beneficial for you if you are still starting out with your business, that way you can easily create a successful strategy. You can now analyze the best high-value potential links to pursue back into your website to build link credibility.
Create a Replacement Page
After you have gathered all the links from prospective sites, it is now expected to create content that will impact your audience and also add gathered links that will increase your outreach angle.
You do not need to copy the dead page word for word, create something original and related to the page. Using automation tools can help you focus on finding and replacing broken links.
Conclusion
Generally, link building strategies are ways of building links by finding the right prospect. You can not achieve a broken link building result without having a value proposition. Using a custom outreach template will help you structure and plan different linking prospects.
Webmasters receive thousands of emails from time to time, and the only way you can stand out is to pitch in a unique way that interprets your brand’s personality.
